THE SPIDER'S THREAD: A TALE OF JUPITI

Chapter 10: Under the Slaughterhouse

The slaughterhouse smelled worse at night.

Rot, rust, and old blood had seeped into the stone so deep it felt like the building itself remembered every kill. Sela walked two steps behind me, silent. She’d given me the location, but her eyes kept checking shadows. She didn’t trust me. Good. I didn’t trust her either.

“Under the Lion sigil,” she whispered. “Fourth floor down. They move the journals every night, but this is where they keep them tonight.”

We didn’t use the stairs. Stairs made noise.

I crouched, pressed my palm to the floor, and felt the threads. Air, shadow, the faint line of a gap between rotting planks. Web Step took us down in silence, dropping us through the gaps like spiders through a web. My stomach twisted each time. The first time always felt like falling.

The basement was a vault. No windows, stone walls slick with moisture, air so thick it tasted like iron.

And in the center, on a table of black wood, lay a single journal. Leather cracked, pages stained with ink and something darker. My mother’s handwriting.

I reached for it.

The floor dropped.

Jackals.

Three of them rose from hidden pits, flesh stitched with bone and fang, grafts pulsing under their skin. Carrion grafts. Their leader grinned, a mouth full of teeth that weren’t his.

“You tied our fate to Sela,” he said. “Cute trick. But we cut the thread.”

He held up a b****y blade, my mother’s blood still wet on it.

“You can’t cut fate,” I said. “Only delay it.”

The fight was brutal and fast.

They were strong, wrong, unnatural. Grafted powers didn’t sit right in the body. They moved like puppets with too many strings, jerking and twitching.

I didn’t fight them straight.

Dust Weaver turned the bone dust on the floor into a blinding cloud.

Web Step put me behind them before they could track me.

Silk Tongue whispered doubts right into their ears: Your grafts are rejecting. You’ll die if you keep this up. The Lion will throw you away when you’re done.

One by one they hesitated.

Hesitation got them killed.

The leader came at me last, blade high, grafts sparking with stolen Rabbit speed. I let him come. At the last second I dropped, swept his legs, and drove the totem into his grafted chest.

He gasped, staring at me.

“Where’s the second family?” I asked.

He laughed, blood bubbling. “The Rabbits? They’re already coming for you. Sela sold you out.”

Sela drew her blade, face like stone.

“He’s lying,” she said.

I looked at her, then back at the Jackal.

“Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll find out.”

I took the journal.

First family down.

We didn’t leave right away.

I opened the journal with shaking hands. It wasn’t a journal. Not really.

It was a map. Lines and knots drawn in ink that shifted when I wasn’t looking. Threads. Not of silk, but of fate. My mother’s handwriting crawled along the edges, notes only I could read.

“They don’t hunt us for power. They hunt us because we can see the weave. If they cut the spider, the web falls.”

Then I saw it. On the back of the map, hidden in blood, was a name I knew.

Nala.

Not the Nala I met in the dead district. Older. The original.

“Nala was the first to break the weave. She taught the Lion how to see threads. She betrayed us. She promised them control. They promised her safety. They broke their promise.”

I slammed the journal shut.

“You knew,” I said to Sela.

She didn’t deny it.

“The Lion didn’t find the Anansi family,” she said quietly. “Nala gave us to them. For a promise. A promise they broke. She’s been trying to fix it ever since.”

So Nala wasn’t a victim. She was the start of it all. The first traitor. The first teacher of the Lion.

And she was in the dead district, waiting for me.

“Why would she help me now?” I asked.

Sela shrugged. “Guilt. Or she needs you to finish what she started.”

The mystery deepened. Why would she help me, if she’d started the war?

I closed the journal and tucked it into my coat.

“Rabbits next,” I said. “Then we find Nala. I need answers.”

Sela nodded.

For the first time, it wasn’t an act.

Above us, boots hit stone. Heavy, rhythmic, wrong.

Not Rabbit steps.

Lion guards.

They’d found the slaughterhouse.

Sela swore. “We need to move. Now.”

I looked at the door, then at the map in my coat.

We were out of time.

The hunt was coming down.